CHAPTER XXVII. At Oak Dene Manor
Ah! To how many faith has been
No evidence of things unseen,
But a dim shadow that recasts the creed of the Phantasiasts.
* * * *
For others a diviner creed
Is living in the life they lead.
The passing of their beautiful feet
Blesses the pavement of the street,
And all their looks and words repeat
Old Fuller's saying wise and sweet,
Not as a vulture, but a dove,
The Holy Ghost came from above.
Tales of a Wayside Inn. Longfellow
During the interview Erica had braced herself up to endure, but when it was over her strength all at once evaporated. She dragged herself upstairs somehow, and had just reached her room, when Mrs. Fane-Smith met her. She was preoccupied with her own anxieties, or Erica's exhaustion could not have escaped her notice.
“I am really quite unhappy about Rose!” she exclaimed. “We must send for Doctor L——. Her cough seems so much worse, I fear it will turn to bronchitis. Are you learned in such things?”
“I helped to nurse Tom through a bad attack once,” said Erica.
“Oh! Then come and see her,” said Mrs. Fane-Smith.
Erica went without a word. She would not have liked Mrs. Fane-Smith's fussing, but yet the sight of her care for Rose made her feel more achingly conscious of the blank in her own life that blank which nothing could ever fill. She wanted her own mother so terribly, and just now Mrs. Fane-Smith had touched the old wound roughly.
Rose seemed remarkably cheerful, and not nearly so much invalided as her mother thought.
“Mamma always thinks I am going to die if I'm at all out of sorts,” she remarked, when Mrs. Fane-Smith had left the room to write to the doctor. “I believe you want doctoring much more than I do. What is the matter? You are as white as a sheet!”
“I am tired and rather worried, and my back is troublesome,” said Erica.